


Bennu

by Magpied_Spider



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh!
Genre: Gen, card games in ancient egypt, help this is way longer than it was meant to be, i'm conflating yami yuugi with memories and pharaoh atem, title is sucky and trite but eh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-30
Updated: 2014-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-19 09:00:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2382575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magpied_Spider/pseuds/Magpied_Spider
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Which Yami Bakura and The Ancient Pharaoh Atem Return From Beyond The Grave Due To The Misapplication Of Necromancy By Some Teenagers.</p><p>“If we get caught,” Mo cautioned, later, as they climbed down in the dark to where the archaeological digs were located, “We’ll be kicked out of school faster than you can say “I summon Blue-Eyes White Dragon!””</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bennu

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VaguelyGenius](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VaguelyGenius/gifts).



The ritual had started off as a joke – not a funny one, in retrospect – when one of Mo’s friends had suggested they break into a tomb.

“Come on,” Ali had encouraged, “They’re not guarded, all the valuable stuff’s taken to the museums, but think about how cool it would be!” He turned to Omar, who had looked dubious. “It’ll be like those Russians who climbed our Pyramids, but in reverse!”

“Reverse would be us climbing the Kremlin or something,” Karim pointed out, “But I see where you’re coming from, it’d still be cool. I guess.”

Omar struggled between the two warring points of _cool photos to put on the internet_ and _illegal photos that could be linked back to me_ , but the former overpowered the latter. “It’d need a good caption,” he said, “But I could work with it.”

Ali had turned to Mo, then. “See? It’ll be great!”

Mo had still been uncertain, but, sensing the general mood of his friends, agreed to the harebrained scheme.

“If we get caught,” he cautioned, later, as they climbed down in the dark to where the archaeological digs were located, “We’ll be kicked out of school faster than you can say “I summon Blue-Eyes White Dragon!””

Karim coughed. “The only person who can _actually_ say that is Seto Kaiba. I mean, unless you’re using fake cards, in which case, obvious much?”

“Ok, one, the artwork is awesome whether the cards are fake or not, and two, you know what I meant, so stop being pedantic.”

The four of them crept along, as Karim, using a glowstick concealed inside the tome, consulted the book he’d brought – which was thicker that Mo’s maths textbook and twice as heavy, and seemed to have everything ever written about Ancient Egypt ever contained within it – and decided to head down a trail that was less well trodden than most of the others.

Not one of the tourist destinations, less likely to have some sort of guard. Mo could see the logic.

“Hey, guys!”

Omar had found a door in the sand, and a flash of light confirmed that he’d taken a photo of it. Mo, Ali, and Karim huddled around it as Omar selected a filter for the photograph and added it to his story.

“Jackpot!” Ali glanced around the area, found the place was not suddenly swarming with police, and turned a torch on.

Well, his iPhone. Which was, at the moment, functioning as a torch.

Karim flipped a couple of pages, aided by the torchlight. “There’ll probably be some sort of secret handle that you can grab,” He muttered, as he flicked through the pages.

Mo sighed, and offered a metal bar that they could use as a lever.

“Where’d you get that?” Omar seemed surprised.

“Picked it up off the ground.” Mo wedged the bar where it looked like the edge of the door would be.

Karim shook his head. “It’d be more likely to open if you put it there,” He suggested, poking at a spot about ten centimetres away with his glowstick.

Mo readjusted the bar, and heaved.

The door – despite being made of stone – opened easily.

Those Ancient Egyptians must have known a thing or two about physics.

The four of them had crept down the stairs, and found themselves in a tunnel. “Woah…”

Ali flashed the iPhone-torchlight around the place, and the walls, now illuminated, were… blank.

Well, blank stone, but still. Not covered in gold plating or ancient text, that’s for sure.

“That’s a bit anticlimactic,” Mo observed.

They continued down the tunnel, footfalls echoing – it twisted and turned, but didn’t fork, so there was no way they wouldn’t be able to find their way back – until it opened up into a larger chamber.

The four of them stood, blinking, at the walls – which looked like they’d been taken out of a movie set, they were covered in hieroglyphs –as they looked down the chamber.

The corridor continued on further than the iPhone’s torch could show, gold glinting off the walls.

Karim shut the book, and the thud of the heavy cover echoed through the darkness. “That’s… a ritual. Huh,” he said, “That whole curses-on-the wall thing was supposed to be a movies-invented thing, not an actual… thing.”

He examined the wall, turning his own phone – a Samsung - onto torch mode to better read, as Omar’s flash started to flare.

Omar looked at the phone, where the photos had come up, and made a face.

“We _are_ underground,” pointed out Ali, “Did you really think the signal would be strong?”

Omar shrugged, and continued to think of a caption to put on the recent addition to his story.

“It’s a ritual for resurrecting the dead,” Karim announced. “Weird thing is, it looks like…” He trailed off.

“What?” Mo prodded.

“It looks like they’re using duel monsters cards.” He shone the light on the wall, where, interspersed among the symbols, was something that clearly looked like a duel monster.

Omar blinked. “The ancient Egyptians used Duel Monsters cards to bring the dead back to life?”

Karim shrugged, as Ali snorted at the ludicrous proposition.

“I mean, I’m no expert, but that’s what it looks like.”

Ali, impulsive as ever, laughed, and pulled out his deck, some of the cards coming loose.

They fell on the ground, and he bent to pick them up, then, glancing at the still-illuminated wall, arranged them to match what was depicted.

“What are you doing?” Mo asked, as Omar’s flash went off as he took another photo.

“Resurrecting the dead,” Ali replied, as Karim huffed, and tried to explain that it only _looked_ like that was what the thing on the wall said, and that he just liked to study this sort of stuff in his spare time, he wasn’t an expert or anything.

“You need to say the words, as well,” Karim finished.

“Does it have to be someone buried here? Because as cool as a reanimated skeleton would be…”

Karim held up the torch to the book and, after a few moments of back and forth between the two, concluded, “Nope, anyone you’re thinking of, provided that they’re dead.”

“Does it actually say that?” Ali seemed curious.

Karim gave him a look. “I’m paraphrasing. But that’s the gist of it.”

Mo checked the time on his own phone – it was into the morning – and pointed out to the group at large that they’d need to get home soon. He didn’t voice his own opoinion that any sort of ritual was a load of rubbish, and the sooner it was “completed” the sooner they’d be able to get home.

Ali had finished arranging the cards. “So, who do we want to resurrect?”

There was silence for a moment, as everyone wondered. There were more dead people than live ones, but it was like being asked what your favourite song was: immediately, every song you know vanishes from your head until all you can think of is “barbie girl”. Or, in this case, Robin Williams **.** “It’d be kinda creepy to resurrect someone whose corpse is midway through decomposition,” Ali pointed out. “I mean, creepier than generically raising the dead.”

Mo snorted softly.

“So, should we try for a Pharaoh?”

Karim shrugged, the movement only half-visible in the dim lighting.

“I mean, technically, you could go for any, provided we’re all thinking of them while we’re in the circle.”

A flash of light took the three of them by surprise: Omar had taken a photo of the three of them, and quickly captioned it with _dead serious about necromancy_.

“Man, David’s going to be so pissed he missed this.”

Ali grabbed the thick Egyptology book out of Karim’s hands, ignored his friend’s startled yelp, and turned to a random page.

“Hey, this guy looks cool.”

He passed it around, Omar giving a nod, and Mo starting at the photograph in the book of the ancient king. Weren’t their heads meant to be shaved?

“Ah-tem. Ate-em?” Ali looked at their resident expert, and Karim shrugged in response.

“Just go with the first one,” he suggested.

He checked they were all outside the circle, then ran them through it.

“Omar, I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess you’re going to try and film this,”

“Hell yeah I am.”

“So all you need to do is think the name. And the picture, but the name will help more. Ok, Ali, you stand here,” He gestured with his glowstick at a spot around the cards, “Mo, you go there. I’ll read out the words – From the wall, which is why I’m standing here, so I can see, and then I’ll count to three, we all say “Atem” while we’re all thinking of the guy in the book, then I finish off the ritual with those last couple of lines and we’re done and dusted.”

“And then we go home and check the news tomorrow and if some skeleton’s gone all _Night at the Museum_ somewhere, we panic,” Ali added.

Omar laughed.

No one else did.

They took their places, and Karim began to read out, haltingly at first, then more confidently, the ritual inscribed on the wall of the tunnel, the ritual to raise the dead.

It sounded like gibberish to Mo.

Despite this, it seemed to have gained an otherworldly tone to it, as if there was another person speaking in the background.

Actually, there were footsteps echoing along as well.

“… what the _fuck_ are these lights…”

A voice was ringing through the tunnel, becoming clearer with every passing moment.

“Atem,” Karim finished, then said, “Atem, guys, you have to say it too –“

He’d stopped as the person the voice belonged to walked into the torchlight. Well, presumably the voice had come from one of the two.

The man that had emerged in the lead was a striking figure: blond hair in stark contrast to his darker skin; tall; the vest he was wearing showed off his muscular arms; and his gold jewellery – armbands, earrings, necklace – gleamed in the diffracted light.

The other man was no less intimidating: he was taller, larger, and bald. He, too, had golden earrings, but any further jewellery that may have matched his companion’s was concealed beneath a thick cloak – which in no way took away from the immense strength that seemed to emanate from him.

The jewellery flashed as Mo, Karim, and Ali shone their phone’s lights at them, Omar’s flashing as the camera shutter went off. _Ghost-_ busted, Mo imagined the caption would probably read.

The blond seemed… not so much angry as incredulous, as he passed an ancient-looking pot he was carrying to his associate.

“What are you – how did you – the last person I saw with such blatant disregard for the rules was –“

He shook his head, gave a bark of laughter, and took in the four teenagers, the cards at their feet, their guilty faces.

“You know what, I don’t even care. So, either get out, or I’m calling the police.”

Omar immediately started to edge away, trying to catch his friends’ eyes so that he wasn’t the only one.

“We’re leaving,” Mo offered, “Sorry. Didn’t realise there were…”

“People here? Yeah, worked that out.” The blond one – who was continuing towards them, a little threateningly – scoffed. “I’m going to give you one chance, so –“ he made a shooing gesture with his hands.

The other one, the bigger one, conveyed – using only eyebrow movements – that they should do as the blond had instructed.

Ali made an expression that looked halfway between pain and uncertainty – like he wanted to gather up his cards – but the expression on the strangers’ faces made him think the better of it.

They left.

Malik Ishtar examined the ritual they had left behind, and suppressed a sigh. It didn’t look like the kids had gotten very far, but even so…

Doors – whether to the Shadow Realm or the Realm of the Dead - were better left closed. There was a reason it hadn’t been reopened in the ten-or-so years since the Ceremonial Duel. He expressed the sentiment to Rishid.

“Interesting, don’t you think, brother, that the one time we return to the tunnels we find intruders?”

Rishid shrugged in a non-committal manner. “Well, the Museum will be happy with this pot, at least.”

A pot at the Museum had gone missing, and a similar artifact was required to entertain the tourists while the staff tracked down the missing relic. Malik had offered to find a quick replacement, and then proceeded to rope his brother into assisting him with the re-acquisition of one of their old heirlooms.

There was a large selection of pots in the honeycomb of tunnels, come to think of it. Perhaps he should let some archaeologists have at them, see what new discoveries they could make from the carvings.

The teens weren’t robbers like Bakura had been, Malik thought, as he stepped into the circle, gathering up the cards – Duel Monsters, popular as ever – they didn’t mean any harm, they weren’t trying to take anything. Just kids, messing around.

He wouldn’t have called the police even if he thought they were doing anything _seriously_ dangerous. After all, he and his brother were much better qualified to deal with this sort of thing than random civilians who had never even heard the phrase ‘Shadow Magic’.

Malik intoned the closing lines as he picked up the final card, the ancient language flowing from his tongue.

He felt the smooth, slightly uncomfortable sensation that Shadow Magic always brought, and shook himself. The ritual was finished, the four kids hadn’t achieved anything, and –

“ _Malik_!” Rishid's voice seemed very concerned.

Malik slowly turned around.

Yuugi Motou and Bakura _– his name’s Ryou,_ a still-functional part of his brain pointed out, _Bakura was the name of the now-dead Spirit of the Ring_ – were lying on the ground.

Unconscious, despite the nature of the ritual, not dead.

He knelt down next to them, lightly shaking each of their shoulders. “Yuugi? Bakura?”

Bakura – _Ryou_ , insisted the rational half of his brain, Bakura died thousands of years ago and it became official a decade ago – jolted awake, bristling.

“I’m… I’m not sure what just happened, but you’re in Egypt.”

Bak- _Ryou_ shook his head in confusion. His hair was shorter than when Malik had last seen it in person, though no less shaggy, and he seemed… less thin, for one thing. More whole.

Ryou gave a cough. “What…” He was speaking Japanese, “What just happened?” He blinked, slowly, up at Malik. “Why is it dark?”

“We’re… in the tomb-keeper tunnels. I didn’t light the torch.” Malik turned to Rishid, who was examining Yuugi. The ex-Pharaonic vessel was still out cold. He nodded, and got up to retrieve some sort of light-emitting device.

Or a candle. Whatever he found first.

“I thought we were _done_ with all this magic crap.” Malik sighed.

Ryou began to sit up, rubbing his head. “Any ideas about how we got here?”

“Some kids with a ritual. I can’t actually remember which one is on the walls over here – but they tend to open the Shadow Realm, so I closed it – you know, that thing that all the rituals end with? - and then you and Yuugi just sort of… appeared.“

Rishid took that moment to re-enter the chamber with a flaming torch.

Aided by the light of the torch, Malik glanced over the ritual inscribed on the wall.

“Well, fuck. Your last memory isn’t dying, by any chance, is it?”

Ryou blinked. “I was grocery shopping. Unless one of the shelves suddenly fell without my noticing, I’m pretty sure that’s where I was until I woke up here.”

Malik frowned. “I have a theory, but I think we should wait until Yuugi’s awake.”

A muffled groan from the still-unconscious young adult confirmed that he was, indeed, awake.

“Right. So, working theory… it’s pretty rough. Uhm, the ritual is meant to raise the dead. They were trying to raise Atem,” he nodded at Yuugi, who frowned, but Malik held up a finger before he could interrupt, “And because his body has now decomposed into dust, the best thing the spell could find was where he was last living, so they brought _you_ here instead.”

Ryou cleared his throat. “And…”

“Why’s Ryou here?”

“I was getting to that! So this ritual, it basically runs on what the person doing it is thinking about. So, you concentrate on the person you’re thinking of raising, they rise. Got it? Are you alright to stand up, Yuugi? We should probably get to the surface. More air, all that.”

Yuugi nodded, and, leaning on Rishid, they made their way to the surface.

“The whole breaking-into-tombs thing reminded me of Bakura –“ he looked at Ryou, slightly guiltily, “Well, you know. The spirit of the ring. So, he was in my mind when I broke the circle… fill in the rest.”

They pushed out the door, and began to make their way towards the lights of the city. “My motorcycle’s over here.” Malik began to stride towards it.

Ryou took a few quick steps to keep up with him, as Yuugi tried to match both their paces.

Rishid, still carrying the pot, wasn’t too fussed. They wouldn’t leave without him.

Malik tossed a helmet to Ryou, and another to Yuugi. “So,” he said, “Sidecar for Rishid and the pot, Ryou, you’re behind me, Yuugi…”

He frowned. Yuugi must have hit some sort of growth spurt in the last ten years – while he still wasn’t nearly as tall as Ryou or himself, he was no longer about two feet shorter, either.

“I’m not going to fit in the pot,” Yuugi cautioned.

“Yeah, just worked that out. Uhm…”

They ended up – fairly precariously – balancing Yuugi on the handlebars of Malik’s bike while they rode at no faster than 30km/h.

They took about half an hour to get to the museum, and at one point during the ride, Ryou’s arms, which had been wrapped around Malik’s chest, began to clutch very tightly.

By the time they got off the motorcycle in front of the museum, Ryou was breathing heavily.

Yuugi hopped off the handlebars with surprising grace. “That was pretty fun,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to do it again, but it was fun.”

Malik nodded in agreement. Steering was pretty difficult with a starfish of hair in front of him.

“I’ll just drop off the pot.” Malik nodded at his brother, who had picked up the pot and started towards the door.

Ryou was muttering something to himself as he took off the helmet and put it on the bike. “ _Fucking stupid fucking bike I fucking told the bastard I didn’t want to go on one of those wretched things ever a-fucking-gain but does he listen? Nooo, Bakura, we’re not even going so fast, I’ll show him_ fast _fucking psycho with his high speeds and his –_ “

Malik and Yuugi both stared at their… friend?

“Bakura?”

“Yes!” He gave a snort that sounded like a _tch_. “Fucking finally. I accept my fate, do the whole death shebang, what do I get? Teleported to the back of a fucking motorcycle that I swore I would _never set foot on again_.”

Malik seemed torn between joy and confusion. “I-“

Yuugi gave a yelp. “Atem’s here, too! Hold on.”

He closed his eyes, and when he opened them, it was somehow clear that Yuugi was not in control of the body. “Malik,” said the Pharaoh Atem, “This is a… pleasant surprise.”

“You think?” Ryou – Bakura – one of them – was shaking his head. “This is the _exact opposite_ to a good thing. I mean, Atem, not to take away from a second chance at life, but I’d rather not spend the rest of my life sharing headspace with someone who was the main reason I had pretty much no friends for most of my late childhood and adolescence.”

“Plus,” he added, in a slightly different tone of voice, “This guy here –“ He gestured with a thumb towards himself – “can actually keep the wonderful me in check."

He twitched again. “God, I hope that ethical considerations won’t get in the way of finding this lunatic a proper body. If banishing doesn't work, then -” He twitched again, “No, no, _no._ My body. Mine, unless someone explicitly asks for _your_ input, and then, and only then, do we swap.”

He gave a shaky smile. “We’re good.”

Malik and Yuugi exchanged slightly worried glances. “Well,” said Malik, “I guess we’d better head back to my place. It’s just down the road.”

They walked the rest of the way, Malik guiding his bike, and once they got inside the apartment, took their seats around a coffee table, Yuugi flopping on the squishy couch.

“Right. So, I’ve slightly edited my theory on how this has all come about.”

“Due to the fact that there are actual dead people alive again?” Yuugi had sunk down so far into the cushions that he was struggling to get out again.

“Mainly that, yes.” Malik took another look at Bakura – which was really the easiest thing to be calling the two of them - who had taken one look at the cushions enveloping Yuugi and opted to sit on the armrest instead.

He nodded. “We’re listening.”

Malik took a deep breath. “Alright. So the ritual locates the dead, and puts them back where they were before they were dead. Which, in most cases, would be their dead bodies.”

“But in our case, it’s the still-alive bodies we were last seen in?”

Malik nodded.

They discussed it a little more, but they came up with no more revalations, and it was decided that they should go to bed. It was, after all, almost three in the morning. After Yuugi managed to escape from the couch’s clutches, Malik opened the discussion about sleeping arrangements. “I’ve got a bed over in that room there – I can change the sheets if you want –“

“Doesn’t really matter-“

“It’s only for one night-“

Both Yuugi and Bakura had protested, so he continued, “And there’s the couch, which, Yuugi, I’m going to go out on a limb and say you’d rather not have.”

“I’ll go. It’s enough of a trap that I don’t think Bakura could get out of it without waking one of us up,” Ryou offered.

“Excellent,” said Malik, “I’ll grab a few cushions and a blanket.”

Breakfast would be more of a brunch, given how late it was when they got back, so it was decided between the three of them that they would eat at the museum – “The wifi’s better there than at home,” Malik had insisted – and work out some way of contacting Kaiba, or Jou, or _someone_ with the means of getting two Japanese citizens out of Egypt without a passport while they ate at the café.

They walked past a group of five teenagers, three of whom were carrying school backpacks.

The teens were conversing in slightly hushed voices. “I’m telling you, David, it was a proper tomb!”

“Yeah, right. And you _raised the dead_.”

“Well, that’s what we’re trying to find out.”

“It’s like Karim said, if it had worked it’d be all over the news-“

“Some mummy coming to life and walking around-“

“They’d only be able to awkwardly hop with their ankles, their leg get tied together in the mummification process. All the movies are wrong.”

“By Allah, that’s… that’s the guy! The guy who told us to get lost!”

“Is that the King of Games? I thought he lived in Japan?”

Malik, Yuugi, Bakura, and their passengers continued on to the café.

They ordered, and settled down at a table next to a set of canopic jars encased in a glass display case.

Malik pursed his lips in thought. “Unless one of you guys have some kind of connection to passport control I don’t know about, I’m thinking Kaiba is our best option. You _are_ still in contact with him, right?”

Yuugi moved his head in a way that didn’t convey either “yes” or “no”. “I’m sure he’d be willing to do us a favour. Or, at least, be willing to have us in his debt.”

Ryou – whose left hand was drawing runes in some spilled salt and seemed unaware of it – made a noise of affirmation. “They were doing all sorts of experiments with artificial intelligence,” he pointed out. “I’m thinking, if we combined that with magic, we’d be able to get new bodies for –“ he noticed his left hand’s sudden autonomy, and flicked it, “these guys. The Kaibas were doing research into cloning, or, at least, I think they were." He paused. "I vaguely remember Seto complaining about ethical limitations.”

Yuugi startled. The last he’d heard about the Kaibas was from the front page of a gossip magazine, which had a photograph of Mokuba with hair spiked into a Mohawk and the caption “Youngest Kaiba Gone Wild?”

“Wait.” Malik stared at Ryou. “"Seto"?”

Ryou shifted, slightly uncomfortably. “We bounce ideas off each other. It started a few months after the whole thing with the Millennium items ended, he found me looking at a DnD book in the library. We started discussing different kinds of dragons, and how many of the so-called dragons in movies and TV are actually wyverns, and it kind of… escalated.”

He shrugged. “A good portion of the new KaibaCorp merchandise for all sorts of stuff comes from those brainstorming sessions. I’ve got his Skype, actually.”

Malik and Yuugi both blinked at him.

“Well,” Malik said, finally, “That’s convenient.”

Malik had brought his laptop, and so, after the waitress visited their table with their coffees and informed them that their meals wouldn’t be too far away, he set it up on the table.

Ryou logged into Skype, and, ignoring the “offline” icon next to “Blueeyeseahorse”, typed

yo seto you there i’ve got an issue  
and by issue I mean I’m suddenly in Egypt  
with yuugi  
it’s complicated  
seriously complicated

He waited a few moments, then pressed “video call”.

“He’s not online,” Yuugi protested.

“He’ll answer.”

Sure enough, Kaiba did, appearing on their screen in a slightly-rumpled business suit that indicated how long he’d been up and about.

“Ryou?”

Ryou pushed the laptop further into the table, and Yuugi and Malik crowded around so they could also be seen by the laptop’s webcam.

“So, you remember the ceremonial duel when Yuugi and his ancient self who was a Pharaoh duelled and then the Pharaoh went to the afterlife?”

Kaiba brought a hand to his forehead. “How could I forget.”

“Well, some magic stuff happened, and they’re back. The spirits. The Pharaoh, who is currently riding shotgun in Yuugi’s brain-“ Atem gave a wave –it was clearly him “-Plus we’ve got the ancient king of Thieves, who is not so much riding shotgun so much has been stuffed in a bag and then shoved in the boot of the car that is _my_ mind in this metaphor.”

Malik cleared his throat.

“We-were-wondering-if-that-AI-research-you-were-doing-a-while-back-could-be-somehow-combined-with-magic-and-the-cloning-stuff-that-you-had-to-shut-down-but-still-have-all-the-labs-for-in-order-to-make-some-bodies-for-our-new-guests,” Ryou finished in one breath.

“Also they’re stuck in Egypt without passports,” Malik added, “And while I’d normally be perfectly happy to shell out the necessary cash to get false ones, especially for friends, getting them made _in Japanese_ may be a little more difficult. So…”

Kaiba fixed an unimpressed look on Malik. “You’d like me to come over in my jet and pick you up like wayward schoolchildren?”

“Kaiba.” The Pharaoh was speaking again. “Are you really passing up the opportunity to duel me properly?”

A derisive “Fah!” managed to come through from Bakura.

Kaiba pretended to consider for longer than the half a second that the decision had taken to be made. “I’ll send a jet.“

The jet didn’t land at the airport, due to the fact that none of them had passports. It landed near the pyramids, instead, where the group of three (or five) embarked.

For a dragon-shaped aeroplane with a flamethrower built into the front, it was surprisingly comfortable. Then again, it was Kaiba’s personal jet. Of course it would be comfortable.

They arrived at Kaiba’s mansion, and were ushered in.

“Ryou!” Kaiba gave something that looked almost like a smile to him, before adding, somewhat brusquely, “Motou, Ishtar.”

He led them down to a lab – “Why do you have a lab in your _mansion?_ ” – and began to dust off some of the equipment.

“As long as it’s for personal use and not industrial use,” Kaiba explained, as he retrieved something that looked like a mediaeval torture implement from a drawer, “I can do pretty much whatever I want. More so than usual, I mean.”

He looked at the Ryou and Yuugi.

“Much as it pains me to say this, can I talk to the spirits?”

Yuugi nodded, and, with a slight change of posture, Atem was the one in control of the body.

Bakura began stretching. “Aah, yes, it’s good to be back.”

“Right. Well, we’ve got two options, essentially, depending on how the,” and here they could almost smell his skepticism, “’magic’ works out. We can go with the robots – you get your consciousness uploaded into the computer mainframe –“

“Which worked out _so well_ last time,” Bakura snarked.

“There’s been more than a decade of computer improvements, I think you’ll find.” Kaiba huffed slightly. “ We base the body on your current ones, although there’ll obviously be customisation options, and wait for the magic to take its course. Option two is we find some way of cloning you, suppressing the real mind that would come from cloning, and implant your personalities _into_ that mindless body somehow.”

Malik tilted his head. “I’m not so sure about the capabilities of magic to do the second option. Or, rather, I’m a little worried that it would be far _too_ capable of doing that.”

Atem nodded. “The human mind is a frail and delicate thing when not imbued with the power of the Shadows,” he said, “and while some time ago I would have taken that action without regard for the original mind…” He trailed off, and shrugged in a way that managed to convey 'Morals. What can you do?'

“Murder isn’t a great idea,” Malik pointed out.

Bakura looked as though he was about to argue.

“The first option is a lot more viable,” Kaiba added. “Given that to grow the clones would take… several years. Minimum. Also, I’d probably have to get a biology degree, which,” he made a face, “I’d really rather not have to go out of my way to do. I’ll be negotiating with both Cook _and_ Gates in the next few months, and it’ll be much easier to talk tech if my brain’s not filled up with mitochondria.”

He gestured to the torture-implement-looking device. “That scans your brain. _That_ ,” He gestured to a spot on the bench, “Scans your DNA. Add some of the magic, I’m sure the _soul_ could be transferred over as well,” he waved his hands in a way that indicated that the details were to be worked out by them. “It worked ten years ago, it should work better now. Add some magic, voila, new body for you.”

He checked his watch. “Well, I have a meeting now. Don’t break anything, the computer should tell you all you need to know.”

He tossed them a KaibaCorp tablet and walked out, managing to give the impression of a trench-coat billowing behind him – or possibly dragon wings – despite the fact that he was still wearing a business suit.

He stopped at the door, and turned around. “Ryou, we’re still on for Age of Ultron, right?”

Ryou snapped control of his arm back from Bakura and gave a thumbs up.

Kaiba returned the gesture before leaving, this time, apparently, for good.

Malik cleared his throat. “Uhm, Ryou, could you-?”

He blinked a few times as he processed the request, then nodded. He nabbed the tablet off Malik, tapped in the passcode, and, with a few deft swipes, loaded an app.

It looked a bit like the create-a-character page at the start of every RPG ever.

“Right,” Ryou said. “Well, there’s the DNA coder just over there,” he nodded to one of the benches, “So, Yuugi, we may as well start there.” He glanced at the starfish-haired duelist. “Or Atem, either one. The body’s the same.”

They examined the coder. It looked a little like a fingerprint scanner, with a very small needle in the centre. “So I just put my finger on?”

Ryou nodded. Malik looked suspicious.

Atem pressed his forefinger down, and, after a moment, there was a small chime.

“Alright, you’re good.”

Atem examined the pinprick of blood on his finger while the computer whirred. Ryou put the tablet down, and a holographic projection of Yuugi – apparently, the multicoloured hair was genetic – appeared above it and began to rotate.

“Tweak what you want,” Ryou explained. “Actually, tweak as much as you can. It’d be pretty confusing to suddenly have identical Yuugis running around. Even if one of them is temporarily a robot.”

Atem examined the hologram. “The robot thing shouldn’t take too long to fix with the magic we've got here.” He furrowed his brow at the rotating three-dimensional image. “Well, there are a few obvious things. How do I control how it changes?”

Ryou slid the tablet over, the touchscreen of which had a panel that featured several knobs, dials, and a colour palate. “Just fiddle until you’re happy.”

Atem ended up changing the eye shape and colour, height (although he was still shorter than average, he was now taller than Yuugi), a fair amount of facial structure and, in a move that surprised Ryou when it really shouldn’t have, skin colour.

“You’re going to stick out like a sore thumb in Japan,” Malik pointed out.

Atem shrugged. “It’s much closer to what I used to look like.”

“Might be difficult to pass you off as Yuugi’s cousin, though.”

Atem gave a dismissive flick of his hand. “Kaiba can deal with that.”

Ryou felt Bakura’s impatience bubble to the surface. “Right, if that’s all good, we may as well do Bakura next.”

He pricked his own finger, then released control of the body to the ancient spirit.

Bakura, following Atem’s lead, gave himself an extra few centimetres in height.

“I’m still taller,” Malik pointed out. Bakura shrugged.

“One word, dipshit. Boots.” Bakura continued to tweak the facial structure a little, then moved on to skin tone. He took a few moments, then stood back, apparently satisfied. “Right. Let’s see what this technomancy can do.”

All told, the process of a) taking the ancient spirits out of a body and putting them in a computer, b) uploading the data that was now their spirits to some drones that looked just like what the spirits had made on the app, c) checking full functionality of the bodies and d) using magic to turn them into proper humans – the combined shadow power of Malik, Atem, and Bakura coupled with Yuugi’s cards and Ryou’s creativity when it came to making magic work made that last step surprisingly straightforward – took about fifteen minutes.

“So, Malik.” Bakura grinned. “When are you heading back to Egypt? Got room for one more in your flat?”

Malik blinked. “You’re… not staying in Japan?”

Bakura shrugged. “Why? What would I do here? I could get a degree in Egyptology or something over there, there’s a language I can speak that a lot of people can’t.”

“You mean, Archaic Egyptian? You’ll have to learn Arabic before you could _do_ anything with that.”

Bakura shrugged. “It’d be easy enough in a university setting. I could just speak Coptic, decode all the pots for you. Get paid.”

“What, you’d go on digs and occasionally pocket the things that take your fancy?”

“Yeah!”

The group began to walk out of the lab, and into the main entrance hall of the Kaiba mansion.

Malik shrugged at Bakura’s fit-into-modern-society scheme. “Sure. Doesn’t bother me.” He looked at Ryou, who was watching the exchange with bemusement. “I’ll call you if he gets arrested or joins a gang or something.”

“Sure. Alright.” Ryou seemed mildly stupefied that the undertaking had been so simple. “I guess I’ll… not see you later.” He shook Malik’s hand, and raised his eyebrows at Bakura.

Yuugi was rapidly discussing with Atem exactly how they could cook up a new identity for him. “I’m spending most of my time between tournaments working and living in the shop, so… You could live there. Too. With me. Offer’s open.”

“I… might take you up on that, partner.” Atem grinned.

“Right!” Ryou clapped his hands together. “That meeting that Kaiba went to is one I’m meant to actually come in halfway through and participate in, insult all the ideas of the board members, and convince them to commission a new dragon ride for KaibaLand, so. Malik, you and Bakura are getting back to Egypt alright? You’ve still got the contacts to find illegal passport-makers?”

Malik gave a soft snort, and nodded. Ryou made his way up the stairs of the mansion, and the rest of them left.

 

* * *

 

WORLD NEWS  
“Since his emergence a few months ago from obscurity, Atem Sa-Re has begun to enjoy the limelight that comes with being a champion duellist. Already defeating several key champions, all eyes will be on the upcoming Duel Monsters World Series as he faces off against reigning champion, and apparent hair inspiration, Yuugi Motou. More on this story, and the latest Egyptian Dig Catastrophe – are the curses real? – on the news at six tonight.”


End file.
